I have defined the subject matter of science as data collected by physical
devices, which may include that collected by humans. But such data does not
characterize the whole of reality. Witness human consciousness, which is not
physical, and can be detected only by humans. There is a difference between
the following two questions: how old are you Glenn? and, when were you born?
The answer to the former is as old as the universe, and the answer to the
latter is your birthday. Therefore, everything that exists is just as old as
anything else. Accordingly, believing in an instant creation, which may of
course take a finite amount of time, is quite consistent with all the data you
can take. People often talk of the rings in a tree as a deception that God is
putting in our way, but I do not see any rings in the seeds that develop into
the trees. I do not have to prove that there is a universe out there that our
sense and physical devices detect. I assume it! I do not dispute your
assumptions to study nature, but one can never be conclusive about what really
happened. Your forensic study of the past is fine but it can never lead to a
certainty, the best it can be is to be true beyond a reasonable doubt.
Moorad
>===== Original Message From Glenn Morton <glenn.morton@btinternet.com> =====
>Moorad wrote:
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Moorad Alexanian<alexanian@uncwil.edu>
>>[mailto:alexanian@uncwil.edu]
>>Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 10:39 AM
>>To: george murphy; Glenn Morton
>>Cc: Asa@Calvin. Edu
>>Subject: RE: Flawed anthro views of RTB
>>
>>
>>George when an author writes a novel and creates all the
>>characters and the
>>world in which these characters exist, isn't there a logical
>>consistency that
>>the author can insist on? Couldn't our world be analogous to that? Moorad
>
>Then it is a sham, a fraud. More ominously it is another form of the
>appearance of age argument which means we can't trust our senses. I will
>explain because George is hitting at a very important point of inconsistency
>among the anti-evolutionists.
>
>If the nuclear resonances were not fixed as they are, we could not have
>evolved. For instance there are three features of nucleosynthesis which must
>exist or elements higher than helium wouldn't exist. If the precise
>resonances were not as they are, either stars would burn their fuel very
>quickly and thus explode or nothing higher than helium would exist. See
>
>1 nuclear resonances in formation of carbon p 251
>2 fortuitous non resonance of O16
>3 radioactive nature of Beryllium 8 p 253
>John D. Barrow Frank J. Tipler THE ANTHROPIC COSMOLOGICAL
>PRINCIPLE New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
>
>Now, If life didn't evolve, this doesn't mean anything for creation because
>everything including the resonances and rates of decay of beryllium means
>nothing for the origin of life, in spite of it looking like it should. The
>truth is, in this scenario, that life was magically and instantaneously
>created which gives us no reason to understand why the resonances are as
>they are. In the special creation viewpoint, life didn't need the resonances
>in order to be created. Thus they are meaningless but they make the universe
>look rigged for an evolutionary scenario. If that is the case, then our
>senses can not tell us the truth about the universe.
>
>AND IF OUR SENSES CAN'T TELL US THE TRUTH ABOUT THE UNIVERSE FROM THE SENSE
>DATA WHICH COMES TO OUR EYES, EARS ETC., THEN HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE THINK
>WE READ IN THE BIBLE IS WHAT IS ACTUALLY ON THE PAGE? The gospel depends
>utterly upon our ability to trust both our sense data and logic. That is
>what the disciples based their decisions upon when they came to believe that
>Jesus was the Christ. But make the universe a grand illusion and we can't
>trust that the resurrection isn't illusory also! Christians often envisage a
>universe in which the age is one of only appearance, or the anthropic
>coincidences are illusory, where what looks like evolution really isn't,
>where animals which have 98% the same DNA sequence aren't related even
>though they appear to be, where human-like behavior found in the fossil
>record doesn't indicate humanity, where what looks like speciation isn't
>speciation, where transitional-looking fossils really aren't transitional
>fossils, where the gradual complexification of life in the Precambrian isn't
>really the gradual complexification of life, etc. All of the above are
>cases where the sense data is doubted for theological reasons, with the
>doubter often thinking he is doing Christianity a service when in fact he is
>undermining the entire reason for our faith--the real, non-illusory
>resurrection which was determined to happen based solely upon sense data!
>
>Beleive the sense data!
>
>glenn
>
>see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
>for lots of creation/evolution information
>anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
>personal stories of struggle
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